You may recall that window and door workers occupied a Chicago-area factory in 2009 when they learned their employer planned to shut it down and sell it off for parts. Then the factory's next owner, Serious Energy, pledged to give the workers an opportunity to buy the factory themselves. Think of it, good peoples: the workers owning their own factory. It was a dream of Ronald Reagan's, too, and why not? Why would workers owning their own factory seem "unconservative"? Anyway, Serious stalled the bidding process, then suddenly demanded all bids immediately, and jacked up the price so the workers couldn't buy it. Apparently Serious's owners, Mesirow Financial, figures it can make more money off the factory's failure than it can off its success. Now *that's* unconservative! So Sum of Us helps you tell Mesirow Financial and Serious Energy to allow workers to buy their factory. Yes I know the corporation owns the factory and can do what it wants. Why does that mean we should be silent?
Speaking of corporate greed, T-Mobile will lay off another 900 workers in America, adding to the 3,000 layoffs in America earlier this year. I say "in America" because, naturally, T-Mobile has added call center jobs overseas, where they can pay call center operators a lot less. Hence H.R. 5542/S. 2884, the Bring Jobs Home Act, which would prevent corporations from writing off "moving personnel" offshore as a business expense (yes, they can do that!), and which would give a tax credit to corporations that move jobs back home. Seems sensible, doesn't it? I wonder how the Republicans will argue against it -- I'm not especially skilled in anticipating the bald lies politicians invent. Wait, I know: COMMUNISM SOCIALISM NAZISM KENYAN ANTI-COLONIALISM BAD TEH TAX!!!!!!11111 True Majority helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Bring Jobs Home Act.
Finally, Public Citizen plans to protest fracking at the end of this month; you can find out more about that here. Fracking -- which isn't just the 2004 Battlestar Galactica's favorite curse word, but also a gas drilling corporation's favorite way of injecting poisonous chemicals into the water table so that, one day, your tap water can catch fire -- has received a lot of attention in Pennsylvania, as the Governor and the legislature seem determined to let gas drilling corporations get away with whatever they want, but plenty of states face the same problems we face, and though a few Congressfolks (Rep. DeGette of Colorado and Sen. Casey of Pennsylvania among them) have tried to rein in gas drilling practices somewhat, we haven't seen a national movement of any size yet. Let's shock the hell out of the "liberal" media and be down there in force! If you're undecided about going, just remember that the greatest health care development of the past century is clean water. And without it, we're fracked.
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